Friday, December 14, 2012

Ubiquiti Unifi POE

The Ubiquiti Unifi is a fairly cheap and straightforward managed WiFi solution if you are happy with a L2 bridging architecture with not too much additional stuff.
My biggest issue with the hardware is the non-standard POE implementation, which uses 24V "Ubiquiti POE".

The 802.3af POE is 48V, but fear not: standard POE uses a detection mechanism before sending out the juice, so it won't fry your Unifi AP if you connect it directly to a POE switch, it just won't start up.

If you want to go with long cable runs, as higher voltage is better suited for longer runs, I'd suggest to use standard 48V POE to drive the cable, and use the Unifi adapter near the AP to convert it to 24V.